Schlesinger Library

Blackwell Family

Hannah (1792–1870) and Samuel (1790–1838) Blackwell immigrated to the United States from England with their nine children in 1832. Their extraordinary family, four generations of whom are represented in these papers, went on to play important roles in 19th and 20th century American social reform movements: abolition of slavery, women’s rights, woman’s suffrage, and temperance. Two of their daughters were pioneering doctors; Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) was the first woman to obtain a medical degree in the United States, and she and her sister Emily (1826–1910) were instrumental in promoting medical education for women. Their brother Henry Browne Blackwell (1825–1909), his wife Lucy Stone (1818–1893), and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell (1857–1950) were known for their leading roles in the abolition, woman’s suffrage, and prohibition movements; and their sister-in-law Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) was the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States and an active social reform lecturer.

More detailed biographical information about each family member can be found here.

For more than a century and across generations, the Blackwells offered each other advice on courtship, marriage, finances, domestic relations, health, and childrearing. In addition to personal and family matters, these documents highlight the important issues the Blackwell family confronted: abolition; the women’s rights and woman’s suffrage movements in the United States and England; temperance; education of women and the entrance of women into the professions; public health; and Utopian movements. Notable correspondents include abolitionists Gerritt Smith, Julia Ward Howe and Samuel Howe, Horace Greeley, and William Lloyd Garrison; suffrage activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; and English women doctors with whom Elizabeth Blackwell collaborated and worked.

Records of the Woman's Journal, a weekly newspaper focused on women’s rights and suffrage issues, founded by Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone in 1870, are included in this collection. Letters, deeds, and financial records document the many communities in which the Blackwells lived: East Orange, New Jersey; Gardner, Martha's Vineyard, and Cambridge, Massachusetts; Ohio; New York City; London. Individual family members contributed their energy, zeal, and reform-mindedness to their local communities and to the greater American society.

The digitization of the Schlesinger Library's Blackwell family papers, as well as the creation of this online platform, was generously funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission in 2013–2015.

The Library’s collections of Blackwell family papers have been digitized.

RENOVATION UPDATE:

The Schlesinger Library building is closed for renovation from November 2018 through early September 2019. During this time, researchers can access the Library’s collections, by appointment, via a temporary Reading Room in Fay House, Radcliffe Yard.

Since all Library collections are now stored off-site and seating in the temporary reading room is limited, advance notice of at least 3–4 business days is required. Appointments can be made via our Ask a Librarian form.

Related Collections

Best known as an iconic women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the campaign for women’s suffrage, Susan B. Anthony (1820‒1906) was also involved in a number of other 19th century social reform movements, including temperance, abolition, and labor rights.

Suffragist, women’s rights activist, and author of the original Equal Rights Amendment, Alice Paul (1885–1977) devoted her entire life advocating for women’s suffrage and equal rights for women. She was the main architect of the campaign in the 1910s to pass the nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution which gave women the right to vote.

Maud Wood Park, who graduated from Radcliffe College in 1898, was a key figure in the suffrage movement. After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, she served as the first president of the League of Women Voters.

Related Exhibitions

Though she wrote and lectured extensively on reforming marriage and the family, Charlotte Perkins Gilman rued the attention and notoriety that her own marriages and family life unavoidably attracted. She made headlines not only with her ideas, but with her life.

The Blackwells were a multigenerational family of abolitionists, entrepreneurs, educators, musicians, doctors, writers, expatriates, suffrage supporters, and women’s rights activists. The family was characterized not only by their ideals, but also by strong personalities and complex relationships. This exhibition focuses on seven women of the Blackwell family from 1830 to 1950.